A hilarious/annoying article about the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert

^they both were bad. But i agree like he said. The Disney films make the prequels look a WHOLE lot better.

Absolute Shite (*aside from the novelty of throwback IMAGERY, and props)

Very interesting review. Wyman is clearly not a fan, but he made a lot of good points, especially regarding the "soon to be has-beens". I also scanned through his list of Hall of Fame inductees from best to worst and could see some spot-on observations there too, e.g. re the RHCP or Aerosmith. I certainly wouldn't be able to listen to many of his top-listed picks and he does come across like one of these music journalists up their arse, but I wouldn't say he's a complete idiot. Very harsh on Queen, obviously, but hey - not everyone has to get them. He also quoted the lyrics to "Who Needs You" as particularly atrocious, but quite frankly I can't see anything wrong with them.

[QUOTE] [b]matt z wrote:[/b]

Wasn't EMBARRASSING (*i still haven't seen the ENTIRE gig as I've never torrented )

But some notable low points =

Paul Young
Zucchero (*he's not bad at all but it's a strange mashup)
Axl sounds great but Elton? *(trash. ..feel free to disagree)
Robert Plant forgot everything

Def Leppard (the band that modeled their name upon a cheap syllabic relation to Led Zeppelin, presumably because they thought Led Zeppelin didn't mean anything) - ABSOLUTE SUCK

Bob Geldof - (as always) ABSOLUTE SUCK

Seal - showed ALL his limitations

But aside from that it's not an embarrassment. They were popular icons and performers, and the day served as a launching campaignfor the Mercury Phoenix Trust. It's a good thing.

[/QUOTE]

Elton John trash...I'm offended, and insulted by that statement!!! How dare you...you have hurt me deeply on his and Freddie’s behalf.













^^I'm kidding.
He wasn't the best on the day, even I admit that. I also admit I liked what he did.

Disgusting it may be, but articles like this highlight how completely uncool it was to like Queen in North America in the early 90s. I lived through it - it was awful.

I can almost guarantee the same writer will be raving about Queen and Bowie now saying he always flew the flag.

[QUOTE] [b]matt z wrote:[/b]

Wasn't EMBARRASSING (*i still haven't seen the ENTIRE gig as I've never torrented )

But some notable low points =

Paul Young
Zucchero (*he's not bad at all but it's a strange mashup)
Axl sounds great but Elton? *(trash. ..feel free to disagree)
Robert Plant forgot everything

Def Leppard (the band that modeled their name upon a cheap syllabic relation to Led Zeppelin, presumably because they thought Led Zeppelin didn't mean anything) - ABSOLUTE SUCK

Bob Geldof - (as always) ABSOLUTE SUCK

Seal - showed ALL his limitations

But aside from that it's not an embarrassment. They were popular icons and performers, and the day served as a launching campaignfor the Mercury Phoenix Trust. It's a good thing.

[/QUOTE]

Paul Young's voice went years ago after his nodule op.

Pure Bullshit. I know such music critics, which critisize everything about music, which is heard by more than 2 people. When you ask them, which music they prefer themself, you will hear names of groups, which will be unknown to everyone and that's for a good reason. As Freddie said himself I will be a legend, which is totally true. I'm sure, there will be some people in 50 years still listening to Queen songs, when the critics writer name is long forgotten together with his awful taste.

I'm sure that's true, but also I'm not sure the writer said 'I'm going to be a legend!' as he took the job at the Chicago Shopper.

There was always a lot of pure hate for Queen from critics and this is an unpleasant reminder of it. It’s only recently that Queen seem to have passed to untouchable legend status, which is where they should be.

BW: Queen doesn’t have to worry about me. A lot of people say they’re great, they got to be on American Idol, their life is good.

This is interesting. The interviewer pursues the topic of Queen with the writer:

http://rockcritics.com/2018/11/09/rock-critic-bill-wyman-in-conversation-with-chris-buck/

'I don’t care if someone thinks that “Strawberry Fields” isn’t a good song. I would like to read a list of songs where “Strawberry Fields” is the second worst Beatles song. I’d like to hear a spirited defense.'

http://www.vulture.com/2018/05/rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-artists-ranked-from-best-to-worst.html

Queen are ranked second to last in his RNR Hall Of Fame.

220. Queen — John Deacon, Brian May, Freddie Mercury, and Roger Taylor (2001)
When popularity is factored in, Queen is the most overrated band in the history of pop music. This preposterous aggregation looked and sounded awful from the beginning, their music a pastiche of pastiches of things no one in the band were inclined to understand, all of it culminating in “We Will Rock You.” Queen haters love to say the song is appropriate for a Nuremburg rally, but you can also sort of see Leni Riefenstahl giving it a listen, cocking her head and saying, “Nein. A little too much.” Their popularity in the U.S. went down quickly after their heyday, but they remained unaccountable super-duper-stars in the U.K. and in time became the rock equivalent to the beloved ugly toy you had when you grew up.
As we have seen with so many artists, the sliding scales of personal behavior and artistry are difficult to deal with. Having said that, I’ve always found Queen to be on the wrong side of just about everything. Right now the band is back in the news in the wake of the success of Bohemian Rhapsody and they’ve accordingly been shoveling their back catalog into TV advertisements. That’s not surprising for a group that played Sun City in defiance of the U.N. boycott of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Let me explain this to people too young to know about it: In the early ‘80s the U.N., in conjunction with civil-rights groups around the world, declared a cultural boycott of the fascistic and racist government in South Africa. All you had to do was refuse to perform in the fake homelands the regime had set up. Sun City was a casino in Bophuthatswana; Queen played there anyway and was duly and justifiably blacklisted by the U.N. “We enjoy going to new places,” said Deacon.
The band is being docked 30 notches, however, because of this: After the band’s closeted lead singer, Freddie Mercury, died of AIDS, the entire rock universe held a televised tribute show, broadcast on MTV, during which mentions of homosexuality and AIDS were kept closely under wraps. The band (and everyone else at the show) let a new generation of vulnerable kids — and thousands of the unloved, dying alone on the streets — know that, yes, they should be ashamed of who they are.
When this story was originally published last year, a lot of people said I was being too harsh on Queen and MTV; given the tenor of the times in the early 1990s, I was reminded, AIDS and homosexuality were sensitive subjects. Here’s the thing: Being in a rock band is fun. As I said above, there’s oodles of money and oodles of sex, money, and privilege that most of us don’t know about. The only downside is that if your lead singer happens to be gay and dies as part of an epidemic that is scourging a group that was already dealing with centuries of persecution, you should stand up and talk about it to make life a little bit better for the people who aren’t rock stars spending their last days covered with lesions and shunned by their families and society generally. Thirty years earlier, the Lovin’ Spoonful, in one of the best songs about rock and roll, captured it this way: “Believe in the magic that can set you free.” By that wholly credible standard, Queen aren’t rock and roll at all and don’t belong in the hall of fame.

[QUOTE] [b]AlbaNo1 wrote:[/b]

There was always a lot of pure hate for Queen from critics and this is an unpleasant reminder of it. It’s only recently that Queen seem to have passed to untouchable legend status, which is where they should be.[/QUOTE]

It depends what, who and where you're talking about really. In the UK Queen became legends with BoRap in 1975. They remained very popular except for a blip with Hot Space. Music critics tended to dislike them as music critics often wanted music to mean something (politically. socially etc) to give some value and meaning to *their* profession. Today, there are few professional popular/rock music left, and music reviews are usually farmed out to semi-professionals working to a fixed fee. And to this latter bunch, everything is just AWESOME because if they strike a negative note it's unlikely their review will be published. It's therefore a rare thing these days to read a bad review of a concert, artist, song, or album. But Queen were always very popular in the UK. They weren't as high profile in the US year on year: there were highs and lows. They were never a 'cool' band. In the UK, critics preferred shite like The Smiths, Simply Red (Simply Shite), to Queen; or they were considered a lesser act to the likes of Led Zep, Deep Purple, the Rolling Stones, The Who, Pink Floyd etc.

Very few artists quoted Queen as an influence before Fred died. After that, everyone either felt more comfortable in admitting that, or just jumped on the bandwagon.

It doesn't really matter. Popularity has never been a measure of quality.

Did Simply Red get good reviews? I don’t remember that . I think the music journalists actually prefer to comment on the lyrical content and the social/ political side as you say. NME in the UK , Rolling Stone in the US were consistently negative . Even magazines like Q never really featured Queen. To me the tide beginned to turn with some serious articles in Mojo in the early 2000s.

'To me the tide beginned to turn with some serious articles in Mojo in the early 2000s.'
Agreed